Page:Table-Talk, vol. 2 (1822).djvu/255

 Public bodies are so far worse than the individuals composing them, because the official takes place of the moral sense. The nerves that in themselves were soft and pliable enough, and responded naturally to the touch of pity, when fastened into a machine of that sort become callous and rigid, and throw off every extraneous application that can be made to them with perfect apathy. An appeal is made to the ties of individual friendship: the body in general know nothing of them. A case has occurred which strongly called forth the compassion of the person who was witness of it; but the body (or any special deputation of them) were not present when it happened. These little weaknesses and “compunctious visitings of nature” are effectually guarded against, indeed, by the very rules and regulations of the society, as well as by its spirit. The individual is the creature of his feelings of all sorts, the sport of his vices and his virtues—like the fool in Shakespear, “motley’s his proper wear”:—corporate bodies are dressed in a moral uniform; mixed motives do not operate there, frailty is made into a system, “diseases are turned into commodities.” Only so much of any one’s natural or genuine impulses can influence him in his artificial capacity as formally comes home to